Richard Haw's Classic Nikon Repair and Review

Hello, everybody! Have you heard the “Great Leap Forward“? It’s the biggest socio-economic experiment ever done in the history of mankind. It is tragic because during the years between 1958–1962 the Chinese Communist Party killed an estimated 55,000,000 people through famine, chaos, violence, and execution. It was all done for the sake of catching up with the rest of the world, including Russia which is now a power that can project her influence globally. A centralized economy fails dramatically, and this one did just that at its end which somehow lead the disastrous “Cultural Revolution” a couple of years later. Did they get to create such wonderful products in an attempt to industrialize at such rate? I don’t think so because every consumer goods they’ve ever made are crap, and I am old enough to remember how bad they are. Today, I will show you a lens that reminded me of that insane era of human history. However, this lens did better in terms of advancing the impression of consumers about the “CCP” or “Cheap Chinese Products” because its much better in terms of construction and the quality ain’t that bad either. It’s a step in the right way.

Introduction:

The TT Artisan 50mm f/2 has been available for a few years now and it has quite a following because of its excellent performance relative to its affordable price. I don’t know what TT meant, is it “Total Trash” or is it a “Tiny Treasure“? I don’t care, but this one’s definitely better than the 7Artisans that we’ve just took apart. It is a much better lens in terms of production but it still sucks compared to Japanese lenses. I am not sure if this lens was made and designed in-house by the brand at all or was it made by that big Chinese optical company that’s tied to their military which supplies the very lenses that many other companies rebrand to sell elsewhere. It does show signs of common manufacturing techniques and parts so I assume that some of the parts did came from that place at the very least.

The barrel is completely made of metal, which makes it unnecessarily heavy. I said that because there are a lot of things inside that shouldn’t be made that thick. The focusing ring is closer to the camera and the aperture ring is closer to the tip. They have made it like this because it’s cheaper to make. All the numbers are shallowly etched with laser compared to the engraved ones we’re used to seeing from vintage lenses. The aperture ring is so narrow for no reason which makes it feel cheap.